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Rainbow Colored Mountains

Soil is typically brown, but when
mixed with the right minerals in right quantities, it can yield a
fascinating range of colors. You can see such coloring in the walls of
the Great Canyon in Arizona and the desert in Utah, but in some places
the colors are such extreme and varied that it’s almost surreal.

Danxia landform

One
of the best examples of colorful landform is on Mount Danxia, in
Guangdong Province, in China. The Danxia landforms are made of strips of
red sandstone alternating with chalk and other sediments that were
deposited over millions of years, like slices of a layered cake. Over
700 individual locations have been identified in China, mostly in
southeast and southwest China, where this type of colors and layers can
be seen—all of these are referred to as Danxia landforms.
Photo credit: Evgeni Zotov/Flickr
Photo credit: yeung ming/Flickr
Photo credit: yeung ming/Flickr
Photo credit: yeung ming/Flickr

The Mountains of Hornocal

Located
just 25 km from Humahuaca, in north-west Argentina, along a well-graded
unpaved road, are the mountain of Hornocal or “Serranias del Hornocal”.
The incredible colors and the inverted-V shaped formation seen here is
part of the limestone formation called Yacoraite that extends from Peru
to Salta, through Bolivia and the Quebrada de Humahuaca. The road that
leads to this place, located at an altitude in excess of 4,300 meters,
is inaccessible by bus, but can be easily reached by a regular car or a
4x4.

The Hill of Seven Colors, Purmamarca

About
70 km south of Humahuaca is another rainbow-colored hill—Cerro de los
Siete Colores, or the Hill of Seven Colors, located near the tiny
village of Purmamarca, in north-western Argentina. The hill was formed
by a complex geological process that involved deposition of sea, lake
and river movements and subsequent elevation of the land due to the
movement of the tectonic plates about seventy-five million years ago. It
is said that you can see seven colors in the hill, but most people can
pick out only four. The colors are most clearly visible in the morning.
Photo credit: Leandro Kibisz/Flickr
Photo credit: Los viajes del Cangrejo/Flickr
Photo credit: Mariano Mantel/Flickr

Ausangate Mountain

The
Ausangate mountain, about 100 kilometers southeast of Cusco, in Peru,
is also known as Rainbow Mountain or Cerro Colorado because of its
exposed layers of rock bearing red, ochre, and turquoise colors. The
mountain is considered to be holy and believed to be the deity of Cusco
by local Peruvians. It is a site of daily worship and offerings by local
citizens. Every year thousands of Quechua pilgrims visit the Ausangate
Mountain for the Star Snow festival which takes place a week before the
Corpus Christi feast.
Photo credit: Sun Gate Tours
Photo credit: Sun Gate Tours

Painted Hills of Oregon

The
colorful layers and banded striations that make up the Painted Hills in
Wheeler County, Oregon, the United States of America, were formed over
35 million years ago by volcanic ash layers deposited by ancient
eruptions when the area was a river plain. Over time, the layers of ash
containing different minerals compacted and solidified into the various
bands of colors seen today. The black soil is lignite that was
vegetative matter that grew along the floodplain. The grey coloring is
mudstone, siltstone, and shale. The red and orange hues are from
laterite soil that formed by floodplain deposits when the area was warm
and humid.
Photo credit: Richard White/Flickr
Photo credit: BLM Oregon/Flickr
Photo credit: Bruce Fingerhood/Flickr

Seven Colored Earths, Mauritius

The
Seven Colored Earths, a small region near the village of Chamarel,
Mauritius, is a relatively small area of about 7,500 square meters
comprising of sand dunes of seven distinct colors (approximately red,
brown, violet, green, blue, purple and yellow).
The sands were
formed from the decomposition of volcanic rock (basalt) gullies into
clay, further transformed into ferralitic soil by total hydrolysis
(chemical break- down of minerals by water). The two main elements of
the resulting soil, iron and aluminum, are responsible for
red/anthracite and blue/purplish colors respectively. The different
shades of color are believed to be a consequence of the molten volcanic
rock cooling down at different external temperatures.
Photo credit: Claire André/Flickr

The Red Earth Terraces of Dongchuan

Some
250 kilometers northeast of Kunming, the capital of China's Yunnan
Province, lies Dongchuan, a rural area with the world's most imposing
red earth. Spread over vast terraced fields, Dongchuan’s unusual
brownish-red color comes from its rich deposit of iron and copper.
Exposed to the warm and humid climate of Yunnan, the iron in the soil
undergoes oxidization to form iron oxide which is naturally red in
color. These oxides, deposited through many years, gradually developed
into the extraordinary reddish brown soil seen here today. Every year
during spring, when this area is ploughed for agriculture, a large
number of visitors and photographers come to see squares of freshly
upturned red earth waiting to be sown along with areas of budding green
plants. The fiery red soil juxtaposed with emerald green barley, and
golden yellow buckwheat, against a blue sky produces one of the richest
color palate rarely seen in nature.
Photo credit: JiKang Lee/Flickr
Photo credit: Absolute China Tours
Photo credit: Absolute China Tours
Rainbow Colored Mountains